Mindset Hacks

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Greetings and Happy New Year!

We hope you’ve had a happy and healthy holiday season and are excited to get rolling in 2022. We have a lot of plans for 2022 and can’t wait to see what the year brings. Before we get started with the newsletter, we’d like to congratulate Ben on attaining his RICP® designation. The RICP® stands for Retirement Income Certified Professional®. This is an advanced level certification and means that someone is qualified to assist with planning and executing retirement strategies. This is a huge win for our clients in or approaching retirement age. Continued education and professional development are a couple of our focuses for 2022 and they tie nicely into the theme of this newsletter, hacking your mindset for financial and personal success. 

Read – 
In our first meeting for all clients, we focus on ‘Life Planning’ questions. These questions are built to drill down into deeper values and help to crystalize why money is important to people. Money is not the end, but rather a means to create a life that is in sync with our values. Revisiting these questions is a critical step in making sure we keep our values top of mind as we move forward in life. In our January meeting with Ongoing Comprehensive Clients, we will focus on creating a Financial Purpose Statement to serve as a cornerstone for making financial decisions. If you’d like to read more about Financial Purpose Statements, check out this blog post from Micahel Kitces. 

Watch – 
This YouTube video delves into the idea of the ‘Growth Mindset’. The basic idea is that anyone can learn anything with effort and perseverance. It is the opposite of the fixed mindset which states that people are born with innate abilities. If you’ve ever felt a little stuck or unsure if you could achieve a goal, this is a great video to watch. Pairing the Growth Mindset with persistence and sound planning can help people succeed in ways they never thought possible. With the growth mindset, you change how you see the world. Things that were once problems are now opportunities for growth. For any of you with an entrepreneurial mindset, you’ll want to focus on the middle of the video where the growth mindset is shown to be invaluable in helping people overcome obstacles by viewing them as a teacher rather than an insurmountable challenge between them and their goal. 

Listen – 
While it may seem redundant, we assure you that the number and variety of episodes in this podcast will not disappoint. The Growth Mindset Podcast is a fantastic resource for those looking to learn from “incredible individuals across the world, sharing insights and lessons into how mindset helped them to live a more fulfilling life.” The podcast is a great mixture of business, philosophy, and self-help that we think everyone should listen to and benefit from. An example question from an interview, “What is a setback or failure that set you up for a later success?”

That’s it for this month. Thank you for reading and we hope you’ll find value in the links provided. Also, if you haven’t, take a listen to our fledgling podcast, The FI Entrepreneur. We are a few episodes in and having a lot of fun. 

All the best in the New Year, 

The Bona Fide Family

Social Media

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Greetings and Happy New Year! For our first newsletter of the new year, we will take a step away from purely financial issues and address something that affects almost everyone to some degree: social media. Whether you love it or hate it, social media has become an integral part of modern life. Even if you don’t use it, your loved ones surely do, and understanding the power of social media and how to manage it is valuable knowledge to have. Regardless of your stance on social media, we hope you’ll find some value in these links. 

  • Read: A blogger that quit social media? Sounds strange, right? This is an excellently written essay about Mika Perry’s decision to disconnect from social media. Perry touches upon themes of overstimulation, minimalism, and self-worth as reasons for her desire to leave social media. If you’ve ever found yourself mindlessly scrolling through an Instagram or Facebook feed and wondering what the point was, this one might be for you.
  • Listen: If you enjoyed the TedX video (under “watch” below) and want to learn more about Cal Newport’s philosophies and other works (of which he has several New York Times bestsellers!), his podcast is a great start. In addition to social media, Cal talks about ways to improve focus, organize your life, build skills, and succeed in all parts of your life. Sometimes adding to your life is as simple as cutting away the things that you don’t really ‘need’.
  • Watch: Cal Newport is one of the leaders of the movement for people to engage less with or fully disconnect from social media. In this short TED talk from 2016, Newport lays out the basic premise for why it behooves people to reevaluate their relationship with social media. One of Newport’s key points is that increased use of social media fragments our attention and decreases our ability to concentrate and do the kind of deep work that leads to real success in the world. If you’re interested in learning more, check out The Social Dilemma available from Netflix. It’s chock full of industry insiders revealing what they really think about social media and why it is so powerful. 

Inevitably, the New Year brings with it resolutions and the desire to add positive goals and experiences to your life. Could reducing your use of social media help you do so? We don’t have the answer to that question, but we are moved to this consideration. We’ve got big plans for the new year and can’t wait to share them with you! Share with your friends and family and please send us your thoughts about this. We love hearing from you!

Wishing you and your family a happy and healthy New Year,
The Bona Fide Family

Leisure and Contentment

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This time of year is ripe with busyness. You might ask yourself, “How can I slow down when I have to go to A, B, and C or get X, Y, and Z?” In a bit of a different reflection for December than what you may typically be bombarded with in the consumeristic marketplace, consider leisure and contentment, and what they have to do with each other. Leisure, simply defined, is what you do in your free time. Contentment is a state of happiness and satisfaction. Understanding the combination of the two – especially with regards to achieving financial goals such as FIRE (financial independence, retire early) – helps us enjoy the time hard-earned by attaining financial freedom. Enjoy these three resources:

  • Read: To better understand leisure, I recommend Joseph Pieper’s book on the subject, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, or read through this well-thought-out summary. It is important what we do in leisure – leisure is not lounging on the couch all day Sunday watching NFL or binging a Netflix series (“relaxing” as those might be!). Cal discusses this in the podcast below, too: leisure should involve meaningful activity if it is to have merit.
  • Listen: Brandon of Mad Fientist hosted a great conversation with Cal Newport, author of such books as Deep Work, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, and most recently, Digital Minimalism. 
  • Watch: Cal Newport, in a TedTalk entitled “Why you should quit social media“, stresses the need for digital minimalism to allow oneself to be content and to be able to focus without mindless distraction. 

You may wonder, what do we do with our leisure time? Of late, we’ve been spending time playing this game and working on this puzzle.

If you find the information provided valuable, please pass this email along to your family and friends! Better yet, recommend them to subscribe to this monthly newsletter by signing up on our website!

You can click on the links below to access this month’s resources. Thanks for reading, listening, and watching!

Expected Value Analysis

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If you’re looking for different ways to weigh your options, we offer you a useful technique to consider: it’s called expected value analysis. This simple approach packs a powerful punch.

  • Read: I was recently introduced to Todd Tresidder of the Financial Mentor, and have found in him some very valuable resources. On this month’s theme of expected value, his article on Are You Gambling or Investing? guides the reader in learning how to profit more consistently by using an investment strategy with a house advantage.
  • Listen: Additionally from Todd is this podcast on Expected Value Formula: The Missing Key to Building Wealth with Billy Murphy. Wealth is built by calculating expectancy, an approach of weighing the payoff by the probability of success.
  • Watch: For the visual math learner, this video takes you step-by-step in understanding the expected value, using a wheel spinner as an example.

If you find the information provided valuable, please pass this email along to your family and friends! Better yet, recommend them to subscribe to this monthly newsletter by signing up on our website!

You can click on the links below to access this month’s resources. Thanks for reading, listening, and watching!

Appreciating our Riches

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It’s “summertime and the livin’ is easy” and I want to highlight what most of us often take for granted: the fact that we live in the richest time of history. To that effect, I offer the following:

  • Read: While the focus of this article is on demonetization, the content and statistical evidence shows just how rich our lives are, especially considering the advances of technology.
  • Listen: In today’s world, it’s easy to find reasons for pessimism. And yet, we truly live in a time of greater abundance and quality of life than ever before. Listen to Joshua Sheats as he shares some reasons for being grateful to be alive today.
  • Watch: Hans Rosling was a legendary statistician, and in this brief video presentation on The Joy of Stats, he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers – in just four minutes! Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.

If you find the information provided valuable, please pass this email along to your family and friends! Better yet, recommend them to subscribe to this monthly newsletter by signing up on our website!

You can click on the links below to access this month’s resources. Thanks for reading, listening, and watching!